Zohran Mamdani stormed into office brandishing the banner of “affordability,” and almost singlehandedly pushed the issue to the center of today’s political debate. Of all the charismatic, 34-year-old Mayor’s initiatives aimed at lowering living costs, the one that’s garnered the most coverage is his proposal to get Gotham into the grocery business.
The city-owned food store initiative looks so radical, even for this avowed democratic socialist, because it puts a city in direct competition versus an immense, entrenched private industry. On his other big “affordability” initiatives, providing free bus service and freezing rent on one million apartments, Mamdani’s simply using his regulatory and budget powers in the Democratic mayors’ traditional vein of tightening price controls on housing and delivering more freebees
This one’s different: It’s extraordinarily rare for a municipality to challenge local businesses by starting its own enterprises that aim to do the same thing. The only major example: city-backed companies that battle the Verizons and Comcasts to supply broadband. They’re all either struggling, or already flopped. Mamdani’s predecessor Eric Adams shuttered the $2 billion fiber-optic buildout started a few years earlier under Mayor Bill de Blasio. As for supermarkets, Chicago last year killed plans for a city-owned emporium as impractical. Kansas City, apparently the only major metro ever to open a taxpayer-funded supermarket, ended the failed foray in early 2025.
